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UNESCO Chief Visits Iraq

UNESCO Chief Audrey Azoulay at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad (AFP)
UNESCO Chief Audrey Azoulay at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad (AFP)
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UNESCO Chief Visits Iraq

UNESCO Chief Audrey Azoulay at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad (AFP)
UNESCO Chief Audrey Azoulay at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad (AFP)

UNESCO Chief Audrey Azoulay arrived on Monday in Iraq at the start of a three-day visit. She visited several workshops and archaeological sites in Baghdad and discussed with officials the matters related to supporting culture and education.

A UNESCO spokesman told Agence France-Presse that the visit is dedicated to rebuilding Iraq and the organization’s investment in its reconstruction.

Azoulay stopped at the National Museum in Baghdad and toured the old city and al-Mutanabbi Street which is famous for its libraries.

The spokesman added that the Iraqi authorities are studying several ideas for preserving the heritage and considering how UNESCO can help shed light on the country’s cultural aspect and pave the way for development.

Iraq includes six UNESCO-listed World Heritage Sites, among them the ancient city of Babylon, and is the cradle of the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian civilizations.

After the US invasion in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime, many of Iraq’s antiquities were stolen and smuggled outside the country.

The Iraq Museum was not immune to looting in 2003 amid the chaos that followed the US invasion.

During her visit to the museum, Azoulay congratulated the museum staff who have been working since 2003 to return the stolen artifacts.

The spokesman said that during 20 years, the staff had done a tremendous job recovering the scattered Iraqi antiquities.

On Tuesday, Azoulay is scheduled to visit Mosul to inspect the rehabilitation workshops of archaeological sites that UNESCO is funding in this large city in northern Iraq, a stronghold of the terrorist ISIS organization before its defeat in 2017.

On Wednesday, the official will land in Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region, and will visit the ancient Erbil Citadel, classified as a UNESCO heritage site.

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Varieties

Climate Change Causing More Change in Rainfall, Fiercer Typhoons, Scientists Say 

People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
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Climate Change Causing More Change in Rainfall, Fiercer Typhoons, Scientists Say 

People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)
People and vehicles wade through the water along a street that was flooded by Typhoon Gaemi in Kaohsiung on July 25, 2024. (AFP)

Climate change is driving changes in rainfall patterns across the world, scientists said in a paper published on Friday, which could also be intensifying typhoons and other tropical storms.

Taiwan, the Philippines and then China were lashed by the year's most powerful typhoon this week, with schools, businesses and financial markets shut as wind speeds surged up to 227 kph (141 mph). On China's eastern coast, hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated ahead of landfall on Thursday.

Stronger tropical storms are part of a wider phenomenon of weather extremes driven by higher temperatures, scientists say.

Researchers led by Zhang Wenxia at the China Academy of Sciences studied historical meteorological data and found about 75% of the world's land area had seen a rise in "precipitation variability" or wider swings between wet and dry weather.

Warming temperatures have enhanced the ability of the atmosphere to hold moisture, which is causing wider fluctuations in rainfall, the researchers said in a paper published by the Science journal.

"(Variability) has increased in most places, including Australia, which means rainier rain periods and drier dry periods," said Steven Sherwood, a scientist at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales, who was not involved in the study.

"This is going to increase as global warming continues, enhancing the chances of droughts and/or floods."

FEWER, BUT MORE INTENSE, STORMS

Scientists believe that climate change is also reshaping the behavior of tropical storms, including typhoons, making them less frequent but more powerful.

"I believe higher water vapor in the atmosphere is the ultimate cause of all of these tendencies toward more extreme hydrologic phenomena," Sherwood told Reuters.

Typhoon Gaemi, which first made landfall in Taiwan on Wednesday, was the strongest to hit the island in eight years.

While it is difficult to attribute individual weather events to climate change, models predict that global warming makes typhoons stronger, said Sachie Kanada, a researcher at Japan's Nagoya University.

"In general, warmer sea surface temperature is a favorable condition for tropical cyclone development," she said.

In its "blue paper" on climate change published this month, China said the number of typhoons in the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea had declined significantly since the 1990s, but they were getting stronger.

Taiwan also said in its climate change report published in May that climate change was likely to reduce the overall number of typhoons in the region while making each one more intense.

The decrease in the number of typhoons is due to the uneven pattern of ocean warming, with temperatures rising faster in the western Pacific than the east, said Feng Xiangbo, a tropical cyclone research scientist at the University of Reading.

Water vapor capacity in the lower atmosphere is expected to rise by 7% for each 1 degree Celsius increase in temperatures, with tropical cyclone rainfall in the United States surging by as much as 40% for each single degree rise, he said.